Deeplinks Blog posts about DRM

As reportedthroughout the blogosphere, a tool for evading Windows Media DRM has been made widely-available online. Will Microsoft block music fans' ability to make fair use of legitimately acquired music and respond with DMCA threats or even lawsuits, perhaps at the record labels' behest?

Engadget makes the case for why they shouldn't in an open letter published today:

Yesterday, EFF joined an amicus brief filed in support of Sima in its battle against DRM-vendor Macrovision. In essence, Macrovision is trying to leverage the DMCA into a technology mandate, forcing all digital video products in the future to respond to its analog-era DRM system.

I predicted back in December that DRM was beginning to lose its charm for the major record labels. Well, here's the latest evidence -- Sony-BMG is offering a new "customizable" Jessica Simpson track for download through Yahoo Music. And it's an MP3. That's right, no DRM restrictions. Plays on your iPod.

And look what Yahoo has to say about it:

Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day — the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform.

Last week, Congress held yet another hearing about "plugging the analog hole." Why is Hollywood so bent on making all analog-to-digital technologies obey copyright holders' commands? Because in an age of DRM on digital media, the analog hole is often the last refuge for fair use and for innovators trying to build new gadgets to take your rights into the digital age.

Take the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 (the "R2"), an endangered gizmo that digitizes analog video output and records it to a CF card or a memory stick in MPEG4 format. The video can then be put on your computer, burned to DVD, moved to your video iPod, or slotted right into your Sony PSP. You can also output video to a display device from the R2.

Wendy Seltzer, former EFF staff attorney, now professor at Brooklyn Law School, debates Fritz Attaway, attorney for the MPAA, at the Wall Street Journal Online (subscription NOT required). It's a nice, concise exposition of the two sides of the DMCA controversy.

Ms. Seltzer: We're both talking about balance, but our equilibrium points are very different. You seem content if we can pay in lots of different ways to see the same movies on a constrained set of devices. I see balance in an ecosystem of big and small media and independent innovation of technologies around them. I want to see what iPod for movies and TiVo for radio look like, and not just from companies who can strike deals with the major movie studios and record labels before they start.